Holiday Feast: Brown Stock

Another new venture was the preparation of some brown stock. Now, I've made chicken stock for years and years and years. It's second nature—roast a bird, when you are done picking over the carcass, you take the carcass and make a broth out of it. The same with a ham bone. Eat a ham, finish the ham, toss the bone into a pot with dried peas and make pea soup.

Earlier in the year I took a lamb bone and made stock out of it...so I thought I'd give it a try from start to finish with the intention of making broth.

I consulted several books for ideas, but pretty much ended up making up things as I went along. I took three pounds of beef bones (purchased at the local PA Dutch Farm Market) and one pound of stewing beef along with some lard. I melted the lard in a roasting pan over the stove, added the bones and beef and put it all into a 400 degree F oven to brown. This took around a half-hour. You want the meat and bones to brown, but not burn.

In the meantime, I cut up four onions (not a fine chop, large pieces), chopped up about six celery stalks (washed, trimmed at the bottom, but kept on the leafy tops) and about six carrots (peeled and trimmed, large cut). When the beef and bones had been in the oven for a half hour, I added the vegetables.

The entire mixture stayed in the oven for about another hour, until the vegetables were brown, but not burned. I put this mix into a large pot (a stock pot, get it?) and added hot water to the roasting pan, in order to scrape all the good bits off the bottom of the pan. This was put into the stock pot. I added four quarts of cold water and turned on the heat to bring it to a boil.

I then added a variety of spices: bay leaf, several cracked peppercorns, rosemary leaves, thyme. No salt.

After the ingredients come to a boil, lower the heat until a very low simmer. Very low. Just a bit of movement in the liquid, this is a sloooooowwwww process.

After 15 minutes, skim off any scum that you see on the top. Then back away and leave it alone. Check it every hour or so and add more liquid if needed.

Time to cook? The recipes I saw varied wildly from a couple of hours to twelve. I let it go for about eight hours.

At the end, scoop out all the solids and discard. After the large bits were removed, I ran the liquid through a couple of sieves of varying sizes to get out as many bits as I could. (I might get some cheese cloth today and do it a few more times). Transfer to storage containers and allow it to cool. A few recipes recommended allowing to cool in an open container in the refrigerator before putting the lids on.

If you make a stock with bones, you will get gelatin when it cools. This is a good thing.

So, now I have four quarts of stock. What will be done with that? Well, some will go into the gravy for the Yorkshire Pudding. If I feel energetic enough, I'll also make some consomme for the appetizer portion of the holiday meal.